Improved use of renewable resources is essential to maintain the progress that has been achieved by the Industrial Revolution that now depends upon annually burning fossil resources that took more than one million years to accumulate. The present invention provides novel ways to produce and utilize methane, carbon dioxide, fixed nitrogen, trace minerals, carbon, and hydrogen derived from renewable resources.
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a process for producing renewable energy and substances and to improve the quality of fluids such as hydrogen and methane derived from organic materials, particularly including materials such as those found in landfill materials, waste water, sewage sludge, and agricultural wastes.
2. Description of Related Art
More than 400 hundred million cattle, swine, and poultry produce over two billion tons of manure each year. If collected in one place this would cover an area of 1,000 square miles to a depth of two feet. In most instances the compounds of manure that are largely comprised of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen are allowed to rot into the environment. Aerobic decay releases greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide and water. Anaerobic decay releases more harmful greenhouse gases such as ammonia, methane, and water.
Problematic pollution of groundwater and the oceans is caused by allowing manure to enter waterways. Sewage solids and garbage wastes are frequently impounded in landfills. Fixed ammonia and trace minerals essential to soil nutrition are thus kept for hundreds of years, if not longer, from being returned to the soil to produce more healthful crops. Minimal substitution of fertilizers produced from fossil resources provide increased yields but the nutritional content remains questionable.
Established processes for producing commercially significant amounts of methane include anaerobic digestion of biomass to release methane and carbon dioxide. Hydrogen is produced by: (1) steam reforming of hydrocarbons, (2) partial oxidation of coal and other hydrocarbons, and (3) by anaerobic pyrolysis.
U.S. central power plants produce more carbon dioxide than any other source. Electricity is generated by plants that burn fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil. Nuclear power plants depend upon very large expenditures of fossil fuels to produce the steel and other alloys of construction, concrete ingredients, to mine, refine, form, package, and deliver nuclear fuels and to process, transport and store nuclear wastes. Steam-reformation and partial oxidation of hydrocarbons present difficulties because of the production of carbon dioxide and general dependence upon depletable fossil hydrocarbon resources.
Previous investigators including Michael R. St. John (U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,395,316 and 4,341,608), Donald L. Day (U.S. Pat. No. 4,200,505), Mr. Darnell (U.S. Pat. No. 4,105,755), Ronald J. Vaughan (U.S. Pat. No. 4,389,288), James L. Ramer (U.S. Pat. No. 4,124,481) and S. Roychowdhury (patent application Ser. No. 08/659,644) provide carbon dioxide and other unwanted gases that dilute the fuel produced and fail completely to sequester carbon.
Use of biomass digester gas generally consisting of 30 to 70% methane and the balance carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, and water vapor as an engine fuel requires derating of the power capacity of the engine. Even where hydrogen is produced, engine and fuel cell life may be significantly shortened due to the severely corrosive nature of fuels that contain hydrogen sulfide and water vapor.
It is therefore difficult and/or uneconomical for most energy conversion applications to use digester gas. Expensive state of the art processes to remove the carbon dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, and water vapor has kept the promise of renewable methane and hydrogen from significantly improving living standards for the world's energy hungry population.